Things that are utterly bloody fascinating

[ElizabethBest]

Let's hear it please - I love a good wikipedia rabbit hole. I'll start - The Willard Suitcases. Over 400 suitcases of possessions were found in an attic at the Willard Insane Asylum belong to patients who had died whilst inpatients so never left. The New York State Museum started a project to document the cases and their contents, and you can learn all about it and see the cases on their website.

It is a superb documentary.

There is another about a volcanic eruption on one of New Zealand's smaller islands, too, which is worth watching. Cant't remember the title - sorry

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a fascinating book.

She was a Black American woman who suffered and died from cancer. Without her knowledge or permission, some of her cells were taken from her because they had a unique quality - they replicated under laboratory conditions and were multiplied, used, sold on and exploited in cancer research. They are still an important resource today (the HeLa cells)

Meanwhile, Henrietta herself died of her cancer aged only 31. Her family remained in poverty even though the organisations exploiting her terrible condition made millions, if not billions of dollars from her "donated" cells.

A fascinating and salutary read. Henrietta couldn't have been saved, but there is no reason why her family couldn't have had some recognition, and hard cash, from the organisations that exploited and made millions out of her. It was shameful.

The casual use of Black people as unwitting subjects in medical research in the USA was appalling (eg the Tuskagee experiment).I hope that things have improved.

Stalin was casual, Hitler was calculated. Certainly, Stalin was brutal, but the Ukrainian Famine was from Collectivisation. All food was stored centrally, with no means of redistributing it.

He saw the Ukrainians as dangerous and rebellious and didn't give a shit about them starving.

In Kazakhstan, they collectivised the animals of the nomadic population. They had thousands of years of herding them in different seasonal pastures, but the Soviets decided that everyone should have an equal number, the animals starved and so did the people.

The Kazaks lived on dairy, horse and mutton, with the better of villagers hosting regular feasts, people stuffed their clothes with leftover meat. (There was no agriculture to speak of). At least 8 million people starved to death, there are no accurate figures.

Currently 16 million, it's thought that the population is still lower than it was in the 20s.

My wife's maternal grandmother was the 13th of 15 children, the first 12 died, during Collectivisation. And these weren't even State Enemies, they embraced Communism happily.

Things were different after the war, when many Kazakhs became "subversive."

.

I’m not sure we watched the same documentary because Aftershock isn’t about one singular person’s story but the experiences of several people In Kathmandu and on Everest.

I can't find the one I watched now but it wasn't on Disney.

It was about the aftermath of an avalanche and the Sherpa's feelings about working on the mountain. It was really interesting

Emotionalsupportviper (I have serious username envy here! 😆) YES! That documentary about the NZ volcano was just a masterclass in how to maintain purpose and hope in one’s living after losing EVERYTHING. A real ‘my barn burnt down. Now I can see the moon,’ reminder of our ability as humans to grow, despite destruction and loss. That young man who lost his entire family and endured a hellish (ongoing) recovery blew me away with his composure and ability to want to heal and be alive in every sense, despite the loss he’ll never get over. That was a beautiful, heartbreaking documentary.
Thank you for sharing the story of Henrietta Lacks. It’s an awful, uncomfortable truth. As an American, I have to say, we’re miles away from taking collective responsibility for our past, which is still too close. We haven’t done our work. Germany, for example, has a heinous history. But the continuous work that is being done to try an atone for unforgivable, unforgettable atrocities should be an example to the States. But we’re still punching down. We have a long way to go. We have an unbelievably awful history. We really encouraged negative eugenics and then wagged our moral finger at other countries practicing the methods of negative eugenics we ourselves put out there.

The Swiss ring watch was debunked, it was a digitally edited fake: metro.co.uk/2015/02/18/8-times-photoshop-has-fooled-the-world-be-honest-did-these-get-you-5068756/#:~:text=4)%20The%20time%2Dtraveller's%20watch,is%20a%20digitally%20edited%20fake.

And the story of the Taured man has also been debunked: www.snopes.com/fact-check/man-from-taured-parallel-universe/

Just the thought that the earth is suspended in an infinite universe and we are tiny tiny specks of life. It can drive me nuts thinking about it, I mean WHAT is the universe doing there in the first place? I know it's Big Bang and all that, but something had to be there to make that happen......

The birds. I wonder what they think about humans constantly changing their 'plumage' and if they question what is happening when they us hanging said plumage on the washing line.

I know the birds watch us and recognise some of us because the resident robin is very used to me. He comes to me for mealworms every day, but one day I went out to feed him and I had a towel wrapped around my head. He didn't notice to start with but then he looked up, saw the towel and flew into the garage in a panic. I took it off, shook my hair out and said 'It's okay, it's only me' and he gave me a stare, then came back over and started eating again. What was he thinking? I wonder about that.

-Kazaks

• Kazakhs. Sorry!

Not birds, but marmosets are completely freaked out by hats. I took mine off in front of a marmoset once and you could absolutely see the thoughts: 'She took her head off! Oy - you lot - anyone else see that?! Took her head right off!!'

I think I need to get to know a marmoset.

Tricyrtis2022 · Today 14:37

I think I need to get to know a marmoset.

They're a reservoir of bubonic plague, in the wild. Several people contract it annually, in Mongolia and Central Asia, from eating them!

Bollocks, that's marmots.....

Arf!

I remember my mum and dad going on holiday to the French alps one summer and telling me all about these giant rodents that they saw there. I thought they were bullshitting until t'internet and I googled it.

Bloody lovely furry chonks. I'd love to come upon them in a walk in the hills.

@TheVanguardSix sorry my post wasn’t clear it was in reference to the Disney documentary Finding Michael

@TheVanguardSix @Emotionalsupportviper
The Henrietta Lacks book is amazing. The way that Johns Hopkins treated black patients (free treatment but using them as guinea pigs without consent) was shocking. It is also incredible that someone giving her cells away for free, inadvertently created an industry - thousands of tonnes of her cells have been sold - with not a cent being received by the family.

Thanks, are there any interesting ‘artefacts in wrong place/time’ that still stand/are anomalies?

Space going on for every and ever. Billions of universes.
Fatima and Lourdes. Are they a hoax or not. I dont believe in the apparitions. But there is no requirement to believe apparently,

The link someone posted earlier with the "spaces" in "space" between the planets, etc was incredible.

What I think is heartbreaking is how we on earth have given ourselves a ring of rubbish around our beautiful planet.

api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Space-debris.jpg

Is there nothing we won't destroy?

Everyone I tell about this thinks I'm strange lol. But sometimes if I'm reading an article, or looking at social media and someone mentions a town or place somewhere in the world (some random town in America, or an old colleague who I follow posts her runs in Oz where she lives now) I search the place on Google Earth and go on little virtual tours, looking at the roads, what the houses / shops / schools are like there... places I'll never actually visit but by the medium of technology I can explore. I find it fascinating lol

@OhFFSMum, I do that too, it can be so interesting. I like to imagine what it would be like to live there.

@OhFFSMum I am obsessed with Google Earth.
I am currently watching an old New York set crime show on Disney+ and I managed to find on Google Earth some of the buildings they used as the exterior shots for characters apartments. I have then looked at the whole area thinking about how the characters would have shopped at which shops in the area, which Subway route they would have done to get to work...
Ok. That makes me sound like a crazy stalker 😂
They are fictional people though so not so weird 🤔😂